The Comparison of Post-stroke Related Depression Scales

Objective: To compare the characteristics between geriatric depression scale (GDS), Hamilton depression rating scale (HDRS) and post-stroke depression scale (PSDS) in the aspect of diagnosis and severity assessment for post-stroke depression. Method: 45 post-stroke patients were included for this study. Subjects were classified through DSM-IV criteria into three different groups; depression-free, minor depression and major depression. GDS, HDRS, PSDS were also assessed in all subjects simultaneously. Three depression assessment scales were compared between groups based on DSM-IV criteria, and the sensitivity and specificity using cut-off value were analyzed. Results: All scales showed the significant differences between depression group and depression-free group. GDS showed higher sensitivity and specificity than HDRS and PSDS and GDS showed the significant difference between minor depression and no depression group, but other scales did not. HDRS and PSDS in major depression group showed the significant differences compared with minor depression group (p<0.05), but GDS did not. Conclusion: GDS may be more useful to identify the presence of depression compared to GDRS and PSDS. However, to measure the severity of depression, HDRS and PSDS may be more useful than GDS.